Patents, Trademarks And Copyrights Have No Place In Trade Agreements

from the it's-not-a-matter-of-trade dept

As we've discussed before, one of the sneakier moves of the content industry (and, later, the pharmaceutical industry) was to jump into the international trade process, to circumvent national governments and to effectively force them into passing laws that they liked. We've been raising concerns about this whole process, and it appears that many public interest/civil service groups agree. With the US and Europe getting ready to start negotiations on a "trans-atlantic free trade agreement" (TAFTA), a large group of public interest/civil service groups have teamed up to issue a declaration that "intellectual property" has no place in free trade agreements. It also demands much more transparency in any negotiation.

First, we insist that the European Union and United States release, in timely and ongoing fashion, any and all negotiating or pre-negotiation texts. We believe that secretive “trade” negotiations are absolutely unacceptable forums for devising binding rules that change national non-trade laws.

Past trade agreements negotiated by the US and EU have significantly increased the privileges of multinational corporations at the expense of society in general. Provisions in these agreements can, among many other concerns, limit free speech, constrain access to educational materials such as textbooks and academic journals, and, in the case of medicines, raise healthcare costs and contribute to preventable suffering and death.

Unless “intellectual property” is excluded from these talks, we fear that the outcome will be an agreement that inflicts the worst of both regimes’ rules on the other party. From a democratic perspective, we believe that important rules governing technology, health, and culture should be debated in the US Congress, the European Parliament, national parliaments, and other transparent forums where all stakeholders can be heard—not in closed negotiations that give privileged access to corporate insiders.

The TAFTA negotiations must not lead to a rewriting of patent and copyright rules in a way that tilts the balance even further away from the interests of citizens.

Frankly, they could go much further in their statement. As we've pointed out for years, things like patents and copyrights are the exact opposite of "free trade." They are, by definition, restrictions on free trade -- and a form of protectionism. If the goal of a free trade agreement is to remove those kinds of restrictions and ease the flow of trade between nations, it seems incredibly strange to bundle it with blatant mercantilist concepts of protectionism and monopolies.

Wow! I so totally agree with this. Inducements for original-work creation is 100% a domestic concern. What dose anyone care how other foreign entities (countries, TPP, TAFTA, TRIPS, ect) treat or abuse their artists and media firms?

Wouldn't any such agreements intrude upon free trade anyway. If I understand right aren't all these agreements are, in reality, based on protectionism and written in ways we would misunderstand as laymen? Its been of lately a hallmark that all bills submitted to congress have some cool sounding name or acronym that implies some benefit where the text of the bill is written by special interest groups (thus writing law that mean exactly opposite of the name). So why trust any of that?

Furthermore. All these funny foreign agreements have been negotiated in secret and by default that means someone else's rights are trampling on mine.

This is a much better phrased argument that your Senator or Representative might understand. At least I do. (and I don't understand much!)

Shameless plug: It might even offer the opportunity to suggest the self consistent socially and culturally defensible argument that; Original-works (some might say copyright) must have terms less than the lives of who we teach them to (our kids) so that they can actually use the wisdom we shared with them before they die. (this is not my idea only my words and phrasing)

"Free trade" is a "blatant mercantilist concept".

All "free trade" agreements do is favor retailing over domestic manufacturing. Cheaper foreign labor produces goods which can then be imported with lowered or no tariffs to compete with higher cost domestic products. It's NOT good industrial policy, and now that the US has become so hollowed out, no one can deny how it affects the working class.

Mike isn't from the working class; he's an Ivy League technocrat. He's for "free trade" because born into luxury, never had to actually compete on equal terms, nor been involved in daily grind to produce physical goods. His view is entirely academic, where he simply makes up automobile factories that operate the same as movie studios, explicitly ignores "sunk (or fixed) costs", just waves his hands and those are premised as long since recovered so that he can focus on marginal costs. That's why his $100M movie example is false: in the real world, ALL costs matter.

Anyhoo, it's EASY to see the motivations of those dreaded and disparaged "intellectual property" types: if piracy spreads -- and is encouraged by academics that have no stake in the industry -- then their revenue will quickly slow below a sustaining level. So they're doing what can to protect their livelihood. -- If you don't wish to support them, then don't! But don't continue to consume their products while calling them stupid and greedy.

For Free Trade Mike it's yet another opportunity to chip away at the legal protections that provide the framework for entire content industries to exist. Mike doesn't have any magic method by which $100M movies can be supported with voluntary payments, and in practical fact, he's actually against copyright and encourages piracy.

Take a loopy tour of Techdirt.com! You always end up at same place!http://techdirt.com/
If Mike supports copyright, why are the pirates here? They take him same as I do: PRO-PIRACY!

Copyright is important, though

Here's the thing.

Without international Copyright enforcement, Copyright may as well not exist. But we also can't allow treaties to dictate national policy.

We do need to establish that countries WILL respect other nations' Copyright laws. While TAFTA should not lay out specifics, such as the length of a Copyright or what constitutes fair use, I think it should establish each participants' obligation to respect the Copyrights and Patent laws of other signatories to the treaty.

Re: Copyright is important, though

"Without international Copyright enforcement, Copyright may as well not exist"

Assuming that copyright is important (and I'm not willing to concede that point) it still has no place in a free trade agreement. Free trade should be about increasing trade opportunities between countries and copyright is by definition a restriction of free trade.

The other problem with that statement is that this assumes that copyright terms are the same for all the countries. It's not, and by making treaties that say all the countries need to adhere to all the other countries copyright terms, it ends up being a race to the most restrictive terms. This basically makes the legislative processes in each individual country meaningless as they wouldn't be allowed to make more public friendly copyright terms without violating international treaties.

Re: Re: Copyright is important, though

Actually, without Copyright, there is no "trade" when it comes to IP. It's just "take," and I don't agree at all with the idea that every bit of writing, music, or software should be public domain.

A large part of what the US produces these days is IP of some sort: movies, music, television shows, video games, computer software.

How could a trade agreement NOT cover the responsibilities of signatories to respect the rights of the people that created those items?

Again, I don't want to see an international agreement saying what kinds of Copyright terms a US-made product will have in the US. What I want to see is something that essentially says that Copyright will be protected based on the country where the product was created.

So a Hollywood movie would have US Copyright protection in Spain, and a BBC production would have English Copyright protection in the US.

The only other way is to have local Copyright protecting foreign products, and I'm not willing to live with the idea that I can write a computer program that may be worth a lot of money, and then have some country say "We don't honor foreign Copyright" and decide that my stuff is free to pirate.

well, i guess they have just signed their own death warrant and will be excluded from every step of the negotiations. if they thought for one minute that the entertainment industries are going to allow any form of openness and any public interest bodies be included in any of the discussions, they must be on something!

They sell blog filler and "insights" to major corporations including MS, HP, IBM etc. who just happen to be some of the world’s most frequent patent suit defendants. Obviously, he has failed to report his conflicts as any reputable reporter would. But then Masnick and his monkeys are not reporters. They are hacks representing themselves as legitimate journalists receiving funding from huge corporate infringers. They cannot be trusted and have no credibility. All they know about patents is they don’t have any.

Re: more dissembling by Masnick

imo it is not necessary to "have" patents nor even to wholly understand them in all their known and potential ramifications in order to legitimately comment upon them and their uses and misuses.

There also is no need for Masnick to "report" the uses made of his and the others' comments by whomever. I in fact hope that the whole world gets to make good use of and to further share those comments.

It is imo after all high time that the whole world discuss the issues at hand. I firmly believe that our every very survival depend upon that happening as much as possible without restriction. True and effective change towards a more survival oriented and nature respecting and nurturing worldwide systemic is imo of high priority in order even for we, ourselves, to within our own lifetimes (let alone our own children or their children within theirs) yet have the chance for survival and well-being not become irrevocably impossible.

How about sharing this publicly with the world at large

Is it okay to re-broadcast this TechDirt posting and the comments about it that were made here to the general internet public?

If not what a shame that it be so. I wholeheartedly agree with much that was so expressed and I would so gladly see this and other similarly relevant TechDirt postings shared within as broad a public internet discourse as possible. (...while that be yet possible)﻿